First benchmarks for redesigned Mac Pro reportedly appear online

Just over one week following its sneak preview at WWDC 2013, the radically redesigned Mac Pro has supposedly shown up on a popular Internet based benchmarking site running what appears to be a specialized build of OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

The purported Mac Pro popped up on Primate Labs' Geekbench Browser on Wednesday, carrying model number "AAPLJ90,1" and an impressive hardware spec sheet, including the 12-core Intel Xeon E5-2697 clocked at 2.70GHz, and 64GB of speedy 1867 DDR3 RAM.

It is possible that the machine's name and model number were spoofed, but as MacRumors notes, the system is running build 13A2054 of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which is a different iteration than the developer preview Apple seeded earlier in June. Also lending to the computer's authenticity is a motherboard identifier previously associated with the new Mac Pro.

As for performance, the machine achieved a 32-bit Geekbench score of 23,901, compared to Apple's current top-of-the-line Mac Pro which scored an average of 21,980. The current high-end model is also running a 12-core setup, but with a pair of six-core Westmere family Xeon CPUs clocked at 3.06GHz.

I've been seriously considering buying one this fall, but I'm still hesitant because of the choice of GPUs in it. My experience both Windows side, and Mac side with AMD GPUs have been less than stellar, and it's highly improbable that there will be aftermarket upgrades for it in several years time like the previous Mac Pro.

I just went to Intel's site and couldn't find the E5-2697 listed anywhere. Is this a processor that's not been announced?

Yes. The new Mac Pro is running on Ivy Bridge based Xeon processors that technically will not be released until Q3 of this year at the earliest. There are several other components within the Mac Pro that are the same way as well (i.e. haven't actually been released yet).